


Sometimes

by Canaan



Series: How It Could Have Happened [5]
Category: Doctor Who, Torchwood
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Hurt/Comfort, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-06
Updated: 2011-01-06
Packaged: 2017-10-14 11:27:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/148773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Canaan/pseuds/Canaan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Love isn't always the same from moment to moment.  But sometimes, put together, those moments are enough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sometimes

**Author's Note:**

> I was putting together an OT3 starter scene, when this wandered into my mind a little further along its timeline and I had to get it down before I lost some of the phrasing.
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, I'm just haunted by them.

Jack dreams around the memories, sometimes. Past shags and old battlefields give way to void and a dizzying sense that isn't quite falling, because gravity would at least give him something to fight against--some promise of an end.

Sometimes, Rose wakes him and strokes his hair while he remembers how to breathe. She doesn't ask, anymore, because she knows there's nothing there for him to tell her. Sometimes, the Doctor is off doing whatever it is he does while stupid apes still need to sleep--and Rose sings to him, silly songs her mum sang her as a child, until sleep catches her up and she goes quiet and her breathing evens. And then he watches her sleep until the faint glow of night aboard the TARDIS warms into another day-cycle.

Sometimes, it's the Doctor who wakes him, before the gaping hole in his mind can wake Rose. The Doctor draws him close and pets him until the shaking stops. Sometimes, they make love, and sometimes not, and eventually, he sleeps again.

*

The Doctor still wakes, sometimes, with a start or a scream. Since he surrendered to himself and their shared bed, the dreams are less. War and burning and the moment the screaming in his head stops, along with everything else . . . but not as often.

Sometimes, Rose asks him about the dreams. He whispers to her in the dim light, filling her ears with the fantastic places they will go until he's almost convinced himself he won't dream again, and she sleeps in his arms.

Sometimes, he wakes Jack up, or Jack wakes him. Coming together in the middle of his shaken night is like coming together in the middle of a battlefield. Orgasm is less pleasure and more desperate comfort.

Because sometimes, you need light to chase away the darkness. And sometimes, you need someone else who knows what darkness is, and isn't afraid.

*

Sometimes, Rose wakes with a memory of hot breath on her neck. The lingering image of slavering jaws is right out of a fairy tale, and the big bad wolf is ready to take away everything she loves. But she's tangled in cool arms, or warm ones. She can feel a heartbeat that's not her own, or two, or three. She hears Jack's breathing, and if she doesn't hear the Doctor's, then she knows he's awake and tinkering under the TARDIS console, keeping the wolf at bay.

And she knows it's only a dream.


	2. Coda

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Sometimes" is complete unto itself, and it's how I first envisioned this vignette. But when I sat down and started writing, I discovered it wanted to go full circle. After fighting with myself, I still can't decide whether it's better with or without this coda, but it's definitely more bittersweet with it. So I've separated it, and if you don't want it any more bittersweet, you don't have to read this part. You won't be missing anything.
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, I'm just haunted by them.

Jack barely sleeps. He might sleep more if it weren't for the dreams. They don't shake him, anymore, these fragments of more horrors than a human mind was meant to hold, but they do disturb him. He wakes, breathing hard and sweating, and sometimes he remembers a body on each side of him, one warm and one cool, that soothe away the fears and tell him that he's loved and that he's not alone.

Sometimes, he tries to forget.


End file.
